• All-Time Thurston Banks Award Winners
BRENTWOOD, Tenn. – Dr. Gaines Hunt of Austin Peay State University and
Peggy Osborne of Morehead State University have been named the recipients of the 2015 Ohio Valley Conference Thurston Banks Award for Distinguished Academic Service.
The award, selected by the OVC Faculty Athletics Representatives (FARs), was established in 2013 to recognize individuals (e.g. academic advisor, professor, tutor, etc.), with at least five years of service at one or more OVC member institutions, for their outstanding contributions to OVC student-athletes' academic success, learning and development as well for his or her overall commitment to the institution's athletics program.
The award is named after Dr. Thurston Banks, who served the Tennessee Tech Department of Athletics for 31 of his 34 years on the faculty and served as the Faculty Athletic Representative (FAR) for 25 years before stepping down in 2006. He was inducted into the OVC Hall of Fame in 2007.
The inaugural awards were presented to Austin Peay's Dr. Bruce Myers and Eastern Illinois' Dr. Gail Richard in 2013 while Tennessee Tech’s Andrew Smith and Belmont’s Betty Wiseman were recognized a year ago.
Hunt and Osborne will be presented their awards during the 2015 OVC Basketball Championships, held March 4-7 in Nashville.
A 1966 graduate of Austin Peay State University, Hunt served as Austin Peay’s Faculty Athletic Representative from 1979 until 1995 while he was a Professor of Agriculture at the university. During his tenure he served as the OVC FAR chair multiple times.
Among his accomplishments was working as a NCAA delegate that passed a full governance plan for women’s sports, allowing women to compete for NCAA Championships. He also served on the OVC sub-committee that established the OVC Scholar-Athlete Award in 1981 as well as the committee that drafted the League’s first sportsmanship policy in 1995. The Sportsmanship Statement was a first-of-its-kind policy that helped promote the principles of fair play, ethical conduct and respect for one’s opponents. The statement was an answer to a challenge from the NCAA Presidents Commissioner to improve sportsmanship in intercollegiate athletics and later became a model for others to follow across the nation.
After stepping down as FAR in 1995, he served as Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs (1997-99), interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences (2001-02) and interim Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics (2004-06) until his retirement. Hunt remains active in the Governors Club, the Austin Peay Hall of Fame Committee and attends many APSU athletic contests.
Osborne has been associated with Morehead State University since 1979, serving as a professor of marketing in the College of Business and Public Affairs and for the last 13 years as the institution’s Faculty Athletic Representative (FAR). In her role she works to helps with certification of new coaches, the tracking of student-athletes grades and verifying compliance and NCAA certification.
In 2010 she served an integral role in the adoptions of the campus-wide excused absence policy. The policy, which specifically addressed athletics, allows students to make up course work that is missed for a university-sponsored activity. She has also played a key role in for pre-registration for student-athletes, helping them build schedules around practice times to reduce the amount of missed class due to travel and competition.
Osborne serves as a consulting member of the Intercollegiate Athletic Committee, lending her expertise on the subjects of NCAA compliance, student-athlete welfare and university policy and procedures.